


the back of your hand.

by outpastthemoat



Series: new testament [just more of the same 'verse] [8]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel's beard, Fallen Castiel, Future Fic, Human Castiel, M/M, Singer Salvage Yard, Sioux Falls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-19
Updated: 2013-04-19
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas stops shaving, and for all he likes to imagine that he knows Cas like the back of his hand, it still manages to catch Dean by surprise, and it takes him several weeks of idly noting the state of Cas's stubble before he realizes what it's become.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the back of your hand.

  
_You think you're alone without any place left to go_  
 _Like you need one of those kisses long and slow_  
 _Firt glance is not what it seems_  
 _But there's some things I just know_  
 _Like you take two sugars with a splash of cream_

_You take a guess at where I stand_  
 _Oh pick a number one to two_  
 _Then take a look_  
 _Back of your hand_  
 _Just like you know it_  
 _You know me too_  


Cas stops shaving, and for all he likes to imagine that he knows Cas like the back of his hand, it still manages to catch Dean by surprise, and it takes him several weeks of idly noting the state of Cas's stubble before he realizes what it's become.

"You have a  _beard_ ," Dean says blankly.

Cas looks up at him in faint surprise.  He drags a hand cautiously across his chin.  "I suppose I do," he allows.

Dean looks at him closely.  What used to be nothing more than a few days' worth of soft, dark brown scruff has grown out, filled in, been neatly trimmed sometime in the recent past but not banished completely.

"Whoa," he says, shaking his head.  "When did  _that_ happen?  I feel like I don't know you anymore, man."

Cas goes stiff.  "You don't like it," he says flatly.

"That's not true," Dean protests.  He wants to protest that it's just taken him by surprise, that's all; that of course he  _likes_ it, he'd like Cas with or without the peach fuzz, but Cas brushes past him, shoulders held rigidly. 

The screen door to the porch slams behind him. Dean watches him stalk out to the garage.  He hopes Cas has gone to clean his weapons.  He can't remember the last time he's caught Cas field-stripping his guns. 

Cas sends him unhappy glances the next few days, but doesn't say a word.  Neither does the beard disappear.  And now that he's noticed it, he can't seem to get it off his mind.  How long has it been since Cas shaved, Dean muses in the hours of one late afternoon, throwing cumin, cayenne, black pepper into a pot of chili.  Did he  _plan_ for it?  And most importantly, he's dying to ask, is Cas  _keeping_  it? 

He wonders guiltily if he even has any right to question Cas's beard and its presence in his life.  Dean thinks about it: only a single date so far, but there's a home and a hunting partnership and six years' worth of saving each other from death, and life, to weigh in the balance.  Probably he does, Dean decides.  In any case, Dean thinks a full-scale investigation of Cas's beard might be called for.  

He thinks back over the months since Cas fell, and he seems to recall Cas shaving fairly frequently, early on; remembers Cas with something that alternated between stubble and scruff depending on which day of the week it was, even as far back as the car accident in late August. 

Dean can't draw any sort of conclusion at all, it seems, so he finally decides to give up the mental exercise.  Cas works in mysterious ways.  

"For chissakes, Cas, I don't _care_  if you have a beard or not," Dean says finally, exasperated, after another day of Cas's silent, sideways glances. 

"Of course you don't," Cas says gloomily.  He's a mess this morning: hair  falling into his eyes, flannel shirt and brown corduroy jacket both unbuttoned.  His boot laces trail behind him.  Even his beard looks less neatly-trimmed as it had at first.  Now it's gone wild, almost bushy.  He's wearing thick work gloves, in deference to the South Dakota winter; that's almost as permanent a fixture these days as the way Cas's Chevy Nova stalls each morning before the temperature rises, even though Dean's been nagging at Cas for weeks to work on the alternator.

"Really, man," Dean tells him.  "So you're sporting a beard now.   _Whatever_.  It's cool."

Cas sighs mournfully and stares out their kitchen window.  "Garth called.  There's a case," he says in tragic tones, and the question of his beard goes flying out of Dean's head for the next several days.  

He doesn't think about the beard again until he wakes up, completely disoriented, with Cas and his beard hovering just over his face, almost nose-to-nose.

Dean blinks and opens his eyes again, and his vision flattens out in front of him.  At the end of that long stretch of that dark tunnel there’s Cas, peering worriedly into his eyes from somewhere above him. 

Cas looks terrible. He face has gone white, but for the cut slicing neatly across his cheek.  There aredark bruises under his eyes.  He's got blood in his beard, and Dean can't stop staring at the way it's dried in jagged lines, dripping all the way down to his chin.

“Look at me, Dean,” Cas says, and he tries to focus on Cas’s eyes, but he’s distracted by the way that Cas feels, so close, leaning over him.  Cas's hip brushes against his side.  That's nice, too.  

He's propped up against the headboard of another motel room bed, presumably bleeding all over the pillows.  Just another day at the office.  "Cas," he says finally.

"Dean," Cas says back.  "How does your head feel?"

“Fine, okay.  Just peachy,” Dean grumbles, but his voice sounds vague and slurred, even to himself.  It's been a long time since he's felt this lousy, actually.  He thinks:  _head wound_.  Concussion, probably, in addition to whatever head ingury that's making him bleed.      

Careful fingers smooth back the hair on the side of his head, just above his ear.  It would be nice, if not for the dried blood that catches on those fingers with every motion.  "Does this hurt?"

" _Yes."_ Dean grits his teeth, feeling the drag and pull as Cas’s fingers gently part his hair, crusted over with blood, and press against the side of his head.  For all Cas is trying to be careful, the tips of his fingers keep grazing the raw skin on Dean's temple.  

He leans against Cas’s shoulder, and it takes a moment for him to realize that all he wants to do is stick his nose in Cas’s collar and smell his hair. More than that, even.  He wants to put his head down on Cas’s shoulder and feel Cas’s arm snake around his waist, and he wants breathe in the space between Cas’s collar and the scruff of his beard, because for some reason Dean’s certain that’s the only place he’ll ever truly be safe.

Dean tries to focus: Cas wants him to pay attention.  That’s something Dean can do.  It’s something Dean can always do.  But his gaze falls off Cas's beard and he finds himself staring at Cas’s hands instead.

"Hey," he says to Cas, who lets his mouth fall open slightly while he tapes a square of gauze to the side of Dean’s head.

“Yes?” There’s a hand on his face, now, fingers smoothing down the side of his head.  He can't stop staring at Cas's beard.  He's decided, without really consciously thinking it over, that he likes it.  

“What’s wrong with you?” he asks, and Cas furrows his brow, turning his head to peer at Dean sideways from the side.  “Your hands,” Dean tells him, and reaches up with his right hand, bringing it up to rest on top of the hand Cas still has on his face.  

But he never gets there; Cas jerks his hand back and holds it up to his face, blinking several times under the harsh lighting.  

“You’re shaking,” Dean accuses, because it’s true.  Cas’s hands are shaking, tiny trembles that run to his fingertips  along the bones of each finger.  Cas looks at his hands as though they’ve betrayed him personally.  Dean hasn’t seen Cas’s hands shake like that since the days after accident.  It would come on him suddenly; Cas would sit there, on the couch or propped up in his bed, and shake violently.  No blankets stopped the shivers from coming, no hand on Cas’s shoulder eased them.  Cas wouldn’t let him get close enough for that.  

But now, maybe... Dean's thinking it might be a good idea to try again.  So he reaches out for Cas’s hands, shivering under the blinding brilliance under the light. 

“I’m fine,” Cas says, but he isn’t; even Dean can see that.  “Let me help,” Dean says, and closes his hand around Cas’s.  

Cas pulls away, stepping back from where Dean’s sitting on the edge of the bed, and in the shadowed corner of the room his shaking isn’t noticeable.  “It’ll stop, soon,” Cas mutters, and turns away.  He begins to pack away the gauze, the antiseptic.  

Dean swings his legs over the edge of the bed, drops his head between his knees.  Cas steps away, but he doesn't go very far.  "You've probably got a concussion," he says.  "You didn't go down lightly."

"Yeah, well, we're not all made out of sunshine and angel food cake," Dean says distractedly.  He's got the same sort of light-headed sensation he's experienced before with concussions.  "You okay, though?"

" _Yes,_ " Cas replies, terse.   

Dean says, from between his legs, "What the hell  _happened_ back there, anyway?"

"I almost killed you," Cas says, and the awful flat tone of his voice makes Dean lift his head immediately. 

" _What?"_ Dean snaps, and when Cas doesn't answer he says, uncomfortably, "Thought you were over that sort of thing, buddy."

Cas draws a breath.  "My gun went off," he says quietly.  "It misfired.  You've got a bullet graze."  When he turns his head towards Dean, there's a look of guilty misery on his face, that's when it finally occurs to him.

He can't remember the last time he'd seen Cas clean his weapons.

The gun, misfiring.  Cas's hands, fumbling awkwardly around the trigger as a werewolf turn tail and runs.

Dean swears, loudly. Cas flinches. "God  _damnit_ , Cas! What the hell have you been doing if you haven't been checking your guns, man?  That's, like, rule number one of hunting!  It's an accident waiting to happen!"

Cas doesn't answer; he just stands there in the shadows, head bent, rubbing one hand with the other over and over.   And suddenly Dean  _knows_.  

Dean thinks back to Cas's untidy appearance, today and yesterday and the weeks before: the unlaced boots, the unbuttoned shirts, and something inside him aches because that wasn't just Cas being scruffy; he was hurting, and Dean hadn't noticed, not at all. 

The Nova's alternator not working right, and Cas never fixing it; the guns Cas hasn't cleaned.  Cas not making coffee anymore, but rather waiting for Dean to start it up instead.  The dishes Cas is supposed to wash by hand in the sink, but hardly ever does, until Dean gives in and just does them himself.  The work gloves he always wears.

It shouldn't have taken him this long to notice that something's been wrong with Cas, but it has.

"Shit, Cas.  Why didn't you tell me?" he breathes.

"Can you do anything about it, Dean?" Cas answers, sounding both furious and irritated, and Dean's forced to shake his head.  "Well, then."

"You're only thirty-eight," he says blankly, and it must be the concussion talking because that doesn't make any sense: Cas's body is only thirty-eight.  Cas has a millennia of years on his human form.  And apparently he's suffering from something all-too human.   _Arthritis,_ of all things.  

"I'll clean the guns when we get home," Dean says gruffly.  

The car ride home is remarkably silent.  

So are the next few days.  Dean cleans his guns and Cas's both and thinks about hunting, once Cas can't get his fingers around the trigger.  He works on the alternator on the Nova while Cas stays in his room, and wonders about pain management, pills, but this sort of thing isn't really something that can be fixed, he knows.  He gets sore after a hunt these days, and his back hurts something fierce in the morning, but even after a lifetime of hunting-related injuries he's gotten off lightly, compared to Cas.  

He washes the dishes and thinks about Cas's beard.  That's something he  _can_ fix.

He's leaning against the bathroom door, watching Cas hold his hands under a stream of hot water.  Cas stares at himself in the mirror.  Dean wonders what he's thinking about.

"How bad is it, really?" he asks Cas.  

"It's been worse lately," Cas admits slowly.  "It's worse when it's cold like this."

"I've got to ask," Dean begins, then hesitates.  He shakes his head.  "So is the beard here to stay?” he asks Cas, who frowns at his reflection in the mirror.

“Do you think it should it go?” he asks thoughtfully in return, and Dean feels his insides squirm. 

“I like it,” he tells Cas, “but do you?" 

“I like not shaving,” Cas says.  “But I did want something different.  This sort of look wouldn’t go, I think, with the trenchcoat.”

Dean looks at him narrowly.  Cas went and tucked the trenchcoat away, somewhere in their house presumably, and most likely it's in his room because Dean hasn’t found it anywhere he’s looked.  He’ll never tell Cas that he’s been looking, either; he just hopes Cas hasn’t actually thrown it away.

“No,” Dean agrees.  “Probably it wouldn’t.  Suits you now, though,” he adds, because he thinks it does.  He adds, "I could shave you, though.  If you wanted me to."

“Thanks, but I think it like it,” Cas says, and then he adds, too-casually, “Jimmy never liked to have a beard.  He always shaved every day.”  He glances at Dean in the mirror.  Dean gets it.

“You just look like yourself now,” Dean tells him, and Cas lets out a quiet breath of air that sounds like relief.  Dean looks at him, and only sees Cas, a quiet man in need of a haircut, all dark hair falling in his eyes and an air of intensity hovering under the surface, and kind eyes.

“I think the beard's a good look for you,” he says, and Cas looks away, the corner of his mouth flickering up in a quick-as-a-flash half-smile.

"I just want to look like me.”

“Well, you do.  You look good, too.”

Cas looks at him, sideways.  “So you like it?”

Dean has to grin. “Oh, now I think you’re just fishing for compliments,” he says teasingly, and the corner of Cas’s mouth creeps ever upward.

“It’s not too different?” Cas asks then, and Dean remembers telling him, once,  _don’t ever change_.

“You can look different if you want,” Dean replies, easy.  “I’ll like you just the same any way you want to be.”  And it's easy to say because it's true.  Cas will look just the same no matter what clothes he wears, because no matter what those clothes are, they'll always be rumpled and slightly too big, and he’ll always have an air of complete unconcern about it.

He loves Cas dirty and grumpy, tired and confused, loves Cas in ripped jeans and rumpled suits and loves Cas for needing him in some small way, in all the small ways that he does, loves Cas for the way he looks at Dean and the way he smiles when he feels safe and sure.

"I suppose it's staying, then," Cas says, and that's how it goes.

 

Mornings mean sliding out from under a heavy stack of frost-bitten quilts, cold seeping through each layer just as the South Dakota night turns pale with dawn.  Mornings mean an extra pair of thermal socks, wrapping up in layers of henleys and flannel, carrying his boots by their laces as he steals out from his room and down the hall, quiet, careful not to wake the man still sleeping in the next bedroom over.  

Deans spends his mornings with the lace curtains above the sink drawn back, watching the sky over stacks of junkers lighten gradually, and he sits at the kitchen table with a cup of black tea.  He turns on the space heater under the table as he laces his boots, leaves it running until the scarred oak floorboards are warm to the touch, and he listens.

He’ll hear Cas begin to stir, soon, he'll hear the mattress creak as he shifts his weight.  He’ll hear the rustle of blankets, the gentle fall of pillows to the floor, and if he’s very quiet, he’ll hear the soft, sleep-ridden sounds Cas makes as he wakes up: heavy sighs, quiet murmurs, the creak of the floorboards as he stands up.  This is what he waits for every morning, as familiar as the heartbeat of clockwork.  It reminds him of waking up in the library, Cas only an arms-length away, back when Dean first learned to wake up to the rhythm of those soft exhales, those slow breaths.  

And when those sounds go quiet and still, that’s when Dean knows to get up, dragging the heavy chair across the floor, to lean one hip against the counter and measure out spoonfuls of coffee while running the water to fill up the pot.  He’ll linger there as the coffee brews, tracing the familiar patterns of faces linked together on the refrigerator.

This morning is the same as all the rest that have come before.  Cas pauses in the doorway, blinking unhurriedly,  with the same faint air of surprise he always wears when confronted by Dean’s presence in the kitchen, despite the fact that Cas has never once managed to wake up first.  And on this morning, just like one before, Cas finally settles down across the table from Dean.

Cas never has gotten the hang of mornings.  He doesn’t appreciate the finer things about breakfasts, like oatmeal or scrambled eggs or orange juice; he’s never developed a taste for bowls of cereal filled with milk, and he’ll only raise an eyebrow if Dean shoves a plate of pancakes or bacon under his nose, take a bite or two, and then idly drag trails of maple syrup across the plate with his fork until Dean’s done eating.  

So Dean’s given up on breakfast, more or less: neither of them would ever say no to coffee, so that sticks, and Dean’s content with a  plate of leftovers from the night before, if he's lucky, and Cas won’t eat a thing until half-past twelve.  

This morning Cas’s left off the robe and settled for a layer of blue plaid flannel shirt over a long-sleeved gray shirt instead, and like most mornings his hair is still a wild mess.  His eyes are dark-rimmed, and he looks distant, today; he isn’t aways, but there are good days and then there aren’t good days, and Dean’s learned that there’s no pattern to it, he’s just got to take the bad along with the good, so he slides a coffee cup in front of Cas’s place.  

Days like this, Cas will look straight through him, as though Dean’s not even there, and no matter what he’ll say or do there might not be anything that will pull Cas away from wherever far-off place he’s gone.  Other days, Dean might try to pick a fight just to shake Cas up, but not today.  

Cas drops his eyes down after a moment and leans back slightly in surprise.  He  seems to have discovered the coffee.  “Thank you,” he says.  His voice has a extra layer of grit and gravel about it on mornings like these.

Dean sits back down at the table, his plate in hand, and watches him, because mornings are the only time when those sharp, knowing eyes aren’t focused on watching him  He could write a book on all the things he’s learned about Cas, just by watching him every morning.  

He’s learned that Cas never remembers to wait until his coffee’s cool enough to drink; he’ll take a sip and make the same face of mild horror every time.  He’s learned that Cas has a favorite cup, the dark green ceramic mug with the chip in the corner, that Cas will fall asleep sitting up if Dean leaves him sitting alone at the kitchen table long enough, that on some mornings, Cas needs to chase his coffee with two aspirins, fighting off the ache in his hands and legs. 

It must be that kind of morning.  Cas takes his hand out from his lap to take careful hold around the base of his cup, and Dean can see that his fingers won’t fit through its handle; the joints are swollen.  His fingers won’t bend.  

"Your hands, Cas," Dean starts, and Cas looks down at them like he's noticing them for the first time, and grimaces. 

"Cas?" he asks again quietly, but Cas doesn't look up.  "Cas," he says again.  "Let me help you out, buddy."  

Dean reaches out across the table, slowly.  Cas doesn't move, but he's got a watchful look in his eyes.  He takes Cas's hand in both of his own, carefully.  "It'll be all right," he murmurs, and touches Cas as gently as he can.

Cas's fingers are rough from work, lined with callouses that hadn't been there before he was fallen.  He has broken nails, lined with dirt, grease stains in the lines of his palm.  

Dean lets his hands cover Cas's for a moment, letting the warmth soak into Cas's skin, and begins to rub slow circles on the back of his hand, inside his palm, along his fingers. And far from being another burden, another weight on his shoulders, it feels more like an extension of Cas’s trust in him, letting Dean talk care of him this way. Dean suspects his hands are how Cas measures his own worth, sometimes; weighs the good against the stains in his palms.

He tries to be careful as he rubs the swollen knuckles and joints.  Cas sighs, once, long and slow, and Dean squeezes Cas's hand gently before letting go.  But Cas doesn't let him.

Cas takes a hold of his hand without a word, gingerly pressing Dean's fingers between his own, and Dean holds his breath at the feel of his touch, feather-light with uncertainty.  He holds Dean's hand lightly, careful and precise, and yeah, Cas’s fingers are rough and his nails are cracked, and holding his hand is everything Dean had ever dared to dream of.

He’s been wanting to fill Cas’s hands, keep them from being empty; Dean’s tried to fill them with hammers and nails, torques and screwdrivers, baseball gloves and knives and sunflower seeds, and maybe all along the only thing Cas ever needed to hold onto was simply this: Dean’s hand, in his own.

"Thank you," Cas says quietly, and doesn't let go, doesn't move away at all, not even when Dean turns their hands over and pulls them them up to his mouth, leaving a lingering kiss on the back of Cas's hand.

 


End file.
